Apologies Accepted

Most women experience sexual harassment in the workplace.  It's a given that if you have breasts someone is going to comment on them.  And sometimes not saying anything and just going along feels like the easier option - and also the best way to not get labeled a killjoy sourpuss who hates fun.  So when your adorable and sweet coworker takes his willy out to wag it about and chase you with it...well he's laughing and it's in public and other people are laughing so it's not sexual harassment but clearly a joke.  It's "what he's known for" and everyone knows it is "his thing" to hang out naked or flash his d*ck (not duck) at friends because hahahahahaha d*cks are funny when you aren't expecting them.

Yet jokes can go to far, and as John Barrowman has recently discovered, d*ck jokes are distasteful (sorry) and not to be touched (sorry) and that's just the long and short (sorry) of it.

Hats!  They aren't just for sane people, as one hat-maker in Nashville set out to prove when she created a yellow Star of David badge (only $5!) that had the word "unvaccinated" written inside.  Trucker caps were soon to follow, except people were kind of outraged at her appropriation of this symbol of the holocaust.  The hat-maker quickly dropped her truck cap plans and issued an insta-apology on the 'gram, explaining that she in NO WAY supported Nazis, no matter what it might look like.  And don't think you can call her a racist either because she has black neighbors!  If you want a real villain to hate you should be looking at antifa and BLM and not her because she's just selling hates (typo and it stays) and everyone loves hats so leave her alone!!  She's just spreading love and misinformation - when did the world become so hatful towards haters?!

Hate and hat puns aside - grab your fries, Lady, and get ready for a conversation full of holocaust deniers, alternative versions of history, and some real facts around Covid-19, the Delta variant, and antisemitism.

New album, new look, and old videos of Billie Eilish using an anti-Asian racial slur fueled the excitement in the Billie-sphere this month.  Arguably the most famous 19-year-old on the planet, Billie Eilish is a singer-songwriter-phenomenon who perfectly encapsulates Gen-Z angst.  She’s edgy and caring and nihilistic and full of hope, all at once.  She seemingly came out of nowhere and now has multiple music-industry awards, tens of millions of followers, and set new records across the internet.  Recently old videos of 13-year-old Billie appeared, showing her singing a song containing a slur against Asians, using a “blaccent,” and speaking in a gibberish-language that sounds a lot like a mock-Asian language.  Many of her fans were outraged and Billie was quick to act, offering heartfelt apologies directly to her followers.

But as we all know, the internet is judge and jury and holds a grudge.

Audio note: It’s not you, it’s us.

Being number one is great, but being number two is pretty nice, too.  Just ask Allison Mack.  She was second in command of the NXIVM cult and the leader of a devoted group of women who called her "master" and did her bidding.  Sounds great!  Except it involved a cult and blackmail and sex-trafficking and branding and enslaving others.  That all sounds pretty bad, but the bad parts were kept secret – so on the surface it still sounded pretty great!  That is until NXIVM found itself in court and had to admit the secret parts out loud. 

The truth comes spilling out this episode as NXIVM comes tumbling down – and we are here to make sense of all the nonsense as we examine the eternal question: “why would anyone ever do something this stupid ever?”

Future Juliette Update: Allison Mack received 3 years in prison and a $20,000 fine for her part in the NXIVM cult.  Keith Raniere, the cult leader, is currently serving 120 years in prison but don’t worry, he’s writing a book about how he is innocent and completely misunderstood.

He's the Pope and he's pretty important.  His word is law so when he says something there is no argument.  Also when he doesn't say something it's pretty important, so when the Pope didn't apologize for 215 unmarked graves found at a Catholic school in Canada...words kind of fail us here but they didn't fail the Pope!  He expressed sorrow and sadness and is filled with sympathy.  And there's some good news!  Now the church can be forgiven by Canada's indigenous people because that's one of the great powers of faith - mercy!  And since he's the Pope, that's kind of the last word on the subject.

Or is it?  A 10 million dollar grant from the Canadian government and a network of First Nation Peoples ready to dig up the past will decide how quickly forgiveness and mercy will be coming.

Some words just don’t get to be spoken by some people.  That’s just how it goes.  But sometimes people use words they shouldn’t anyway, in places they shouldn’t, and at times they shouldn’t.  Jeffery Singer found out the hard way that the N-word is one of those words: it shouldn’t be used by some people, in any place at any time under any circumstances.  His use of the N-word while auditioning comics for Canada’s “Just for Laughs” comedy program resulted in his resignation and the public statement from the festival organizers informing everyone that they will not tolerate unprofessional behavior in the work place.  Indeed, they find it vexatious!

Twitter came for Ellie Kemper in May of 2021.  They called her the “Queen of the KKK” and accused her of being a white supremacist.  The story picked up traction in newspapers and real media (sorry, newspapers!) and Ellie Kemper (aka Kimmy Schmidt) found herself issuing an apology for being named the “Queen of Love and Beauty” nearly 20 years ago by the Veiled Prophet Organization of St. Louis.  The VPO was founded in 1878 by two civil war veterans so yes, there’s a lot of white supremacy going on in its founding, but there’s also a lot of classism, too. Ellie wasn’t celebrating white supremacy when she went to the ball in 1999, she was just going to a party.  Or was that the point of the party?

Twitter came for Ellie Kemper and she apologized, but in the end it may ultimately be Twitter that owes Ellie an apology (she’ll probably be pretty gracious about the whole thing if you do apologize, Twitter).

The hosts of MFM have legions of adoring fans. Karen and Georgia are down to earth, funny, relatable, and share their innermost thoughts and fears freely on the air.  They also share the thoughts and feelings of others.  Some of these stories are firsthand accounts, and some are secondhand.  It was one of these secondhand stories that prompted the hosts to issue an apology and promise to be more careful in publicly sharing other peoples’ trauma.  It might all be legal, but is it right – and does that matter?  What’s behind this idea of true crime as entertainment – is it really a way to deal with fear of crime or just morbid curiosity?  We don’t have all the answers, but we have thoughts on culture, ethics, and crime.  Join us as we dive into America’s number one podcast obsession.

Ah Amor!  What is life without love?  What is life without the romantic chase, n'est-ce pas?  What is life without a little bit of unwanted kisses and stalking?  Pepe LePew is about to find out.  Once the suave and sophisticated star of 1940s cartoons, famous for pursuing love at all costs, Pepe was removed from Space Jam 2 (did we really need a second one?) due to his past inappropriate behavior.  What was once deemed comically funny is now seen as creepy and gross, crossing a line from humor into assault.  Pepe's apology appeared in the New Yorker Magazine and begs the question: is an apology from a cartoon skunk for sexual assault intended to be a sign that the "Me Too" movement has gone too far?  Or is it an indication that there is still work to do and perhaps the movement hasn't gone far enough?

Basecamp designs software that helps other companies manage productivity.  It’s so good they use it themselves!  A component of Basecamp is the group chat feature called “Campfire.” It’s designed to allow employees to have informal conversations about anything and everything.  Turns out that feature was a problem within Basecamp’s offices.  Their employees were using Campfire to discuss racial inequality and political issues.  The bosses felt that political and social conversations were distracting people from vorking (if you know, you know) and making money for the company.  So they told their team to stop with the commentary and just focus on vorking.  They more than suggested, they made new rules forbidding such conversations on the company’s platform.  Fair enough, it’s their private company, they can do what they want.  The problem is that the bosses had originally allowed the employees to create a Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion committee to look at the company’s behavior and protocols to determine if there were any racial issues at play.  When the bosses pulled the plug on the political/racial chat (as well as a few other health and wellness benefits), they also closed down the DE&I committee. The employees suddenly felt unempowered to do anything other than quit.  So 1/3rd of them quit and Basecamp is left asking itself a question for the ages: where did it all go wrong?